Every AI Model Family That Matters in Mid-2026

Table of Contents How to Evaluate a Family Instead of a Model OpenAI Anthropic Google Meta xAI The Chinese Open-Weight Labs Europe, and the Enterprise-Adjacent Labs Local and On-Device The Field on One Page The Specialists Building a Routing Layer Instead of a Dependency Sizing a Local Deployment Failure Modes Where This Field Is Heading Conclusion Keep Going Cross-posted. This article’s canonical